Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Tea Party Poster Boy Huelskamp Losing Primary Election

Huelskamp, the chairman of the House Tea Party Caucus, has garnered a
lot of attention as well as scorn during a combative tenure that saw
him booted off the House Agricultural Committee.
With 13 percent
of precincts reporting in the western Kansas district, Huelskamp trailed
with 41 percent of the vote to Marshall’s 59 percent.
Marshall,
an obstetrician from Great Bend, gained the endorsement of the Kansas
Farm Bureau — giving him some clout against Huelskamp’s backing from
anti-abortion and gun-rights groups, as well as the Club for Growth and
the National Federation of Independent Business.
Huelskamp rode
into office in the 2010 tea party rout and was part of standoffs,
including tension around the government shutdown in 2013, that drove
former House Speaker John Boehner from office a year ago.

Kansas farmers are taking on some of America’s most powerful
conservative interests in an attempt to oust U.S. Representative Tim
Huelskamp, a Tea Party favorite kicked off the House Agriculture
Committee for ideological rigidity.
The Club for Growth and the
Koch brothers, whose Koch Industries Inc. is based in Wichita, are
backing Huelskamp, who opposed a farm bill providing crop insurance
farmers deem vital -- which former Speaker John Boehner backed. For
farmers, little means more than Huelskamp’s opposition to the bill and
loss of his committee seat, marking the end of almost a century of
Kansas representation. Agribusiness groups support Republican primary
challenger Roger Marshall, an obstetrician who says regaining the
state’s voice on farm matters is his first priority.
“As a farmer
or a rancher, we need the safety net of the farm bill,” said Orrin
Holle, a Rawlins County farmer. “Western Kansas, which is most of his
district, sees severe droughts.”
The
Aug. 2 primary may show the limits of the anti-establishment politics
that have swept Kansas. In 2012, Governor Sam Brownback, promising a
“real live experiment” for Tea Party policies, won enactment of broad
tax cuts. The resulting $400 million budget hole forced public schools
to end the school year early and led Standard & Poor’s to downgrade
Kansas’s credit one step to AA, third-highest, and to put it on watch
for further reductions.
Brownback won re-election, but the state’s
Republican Party was bitterly split. Huelskamp’s loss of the
Agriculture Committee seat provides another test of the state’s faith in
ideology over pragmatism....
Huelskamp, a 47-year-old, fifth-generation farmer from Fowler who
began his tenure in 2011, said he’s sensitive to constituent needs.
“Crop
insurance was my first, second, third priority in the farm bill and it
was in there,” he said. He voted against the bill, he said, because it
didn’t require stricter work requirements for the more than 46 million
Americans seeking food stamps at the time.

The Tea Party has always been playing with fire when it comes to voting against the Farm Bill because they hate food stamps. They should be smart enough to know that urban Congressmen only vote for the Farm Bill because of the food stamp program, but as we've seen, Tea Party congressmen aren't that smart. Goodbye, Mr. Huelskamp. I'm not going to miss you.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/election/article93390117.html#storylink=cpyKansas farmers are taking on some of America’s most powerful
conservative interests in an attempt to oust U.S. Representative Tim
Huelskamp, a Tea Party favorite kicked off the House Agriculture
Committee for ideological rigidity.
The Club for Growth and the
Koch brothers, whose Koch Industries Inc. is based in Wichita, are
backing Huelskamp, who opposed a farm bill providing crop insurance
farmers deem vital -- which former Speaker John Boehner backed. For
farmers, little means more than Huelskamp’s opposition to the bill and
loss of his committee seat, marking the end of almost a century of
Kansas representation. Agribusiness groups support Republican primary
challenger Roger Marshall, an obstetrician who says regaining the
state’s voice on farm matters is his first priority.
“As a farmer
or a rancher, we need the safety net of the farm bill,” said Orrin
Holle, a Rawlins County farmer. “Western Kansas, which is most of his
district, sees severe droughts.”
The
Aug. 2 primary may show the limits of the anti-establishment politics
that have swept Kansas. In 2012, Governor Sam Brownback, promising a
“real live experiment” for Tea Party policies, won enactment of broad
tax cuts. The resulting $400 million budget hole forced public schools
to end the school year early and led Standard & Poor’s to downgrade
Kansas’s credit one step to AA, third-highest, and to put it on watch
for further reductions.
Brownback won re-election, but the state’s
Republican Party was bitterly split. Huelskamp’s loss of the
Agriculture Committee seat provides another test of the state’s faith in
ideology over pragmatism.